Lindsay Darling | Lightnews

Vicky Stein (agentredsquirrel) @vicky.science · 4d

I! Friggin! Love!! Oak! Leaf!! Pinwheel! Season!!

(Oak-leaf pinwheel mushrooms are the fruiting body of the Collybiopsis quercophila fungus! They literally grow right out of fallen coast live oak leaves in my neighborhood)

Photo of a village of tiny beige-capped mushrooms on thread-thin stems and lime-green mosses

More moss and mushrooms, showing the delicate ridges of the gills under the mushroom caps

Fingertip for scale, showing that the mushroom caps are maybe an eighth of an inch wide

Gerri Whitley @gerriwhitley.bsky.social · Jul 28

summer nights lit by fireflies

bioluminescence is so incredible, I just stand in awe of nature and watch these tiny creatures create light to find each other.

#firefly #nightphotography #chicago #scape

Fireflies dance across a park with the Chicago skyline in the background

Lindsay Darling @lindsaydarling.bsky.social · Jun 12

This is based on some research that I did with collaborators from Purdue! It's exciting to see this write up.

Cassie Creswell @cassiecreswell.bsky.social · Jun 11

“A 2020 census revealed that buckthorn accounts for 36% of trees in the Chicago region…Shrubby invaders have infested nearly 80% of the region’s forests…’So if we don’t do anything … it’s just going to be buckthorn. That’s all we’ll have.’”

news.wttw.com/2025/06/09/n...

Nearly 80% of Chicago-Area Forests Are Infested With Invasive Plants. Ecologists Urge Homeowners to Join the Fight

If private landowners don’t remove invasives alongside natural areas, species like buckthorn will persist in forest preserves and parks, regardless of habitat restoration efforts.

news.wttw.com

Cassie Creswell @cassiecreswell.bsky.social · Jun 11

“A 2020 census revealed that buckthorn accounts for 36% of trees in the Chicago region…Shrubby invaders have infested nearly 80% of the region’s forests…’So if we don’t do anything … it’s just going to be buckthorn. That’s all we’ll have.’”

news.wttw.com/2025/06/09/n...

Nearly 80% of Chicago-Area Forests Are Infested With Invasive Plants. Ecologists Urge Homeowners to Join the Fight

If private landowners don’t remove invasives alongside natural areas, species like buckthorn will persist in forest preserves and parks, regardless of habitat restoration efforts.

news.wttw.com

Anonymous @youranoncentral.bsky.social · Feb 20

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker: "What comes next?" #3E [1]

Edith de Guzman @edithdeguzman.bsky.social · Feb 10

Join me and several distinguished tree-folk this Thursday! @lindsaydarling.bsky.social (Morton Arboretum), Elektra Fike-Data (Tree San Diego), Hamil Pearsall (Temple University), Elizabeth Riedman (US EPA) and yours truly will discuss 🌳 planting and care barriers -- and how to overcome them

Lindsay Darling @lindsaydarling.bsky.social · Jan 31

The morton arb stitched all of these images together to create a single layer for the seven-county region. The Field Museum used to host it, but it looks like those layers are down. If anyone wants them (and can use gis), I'm happy to share. This is a good poke for me to make a new interactive map.

Lindsay Darling @lindsaydarling.bsky.social · Jan 27

Andrew's blog is always great, and this is no exception. It's a lovely science story with lots of clear code. Thanks for making the R stats world better!

Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · Jan 27

New blog post! Here's an #rstats guide for how to (1) get CPS data from IPUMS and (2) compare sample and population proportions both frequentistly and Bayesianly with {brms} (with ROPEs!), and (3) make pretty plots and tables #econsky #polisky #dataskyence www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2025/01...

Plot showing respondent demographic proportions compared to national proportions, overlaid on variable-specific regions of practical equivalence (ROPEs)

Table showing sample characteristics compared to nationally representative Current Population Survey (CPS) estimates, with probability that the sample is equivalent to the national proportion

Also, it’s important to check the variable details to check for availability. While basic demographic variables like age, sex, marital status, etc. are available in both the monthly surveys and in the annual ASEC, more specialized variables are not.

Variables related to philanthropy and volunteering are only available in September (since they’re part of a special CPS Volunteer Supplement), and only in some years:

[Screenshot from the IPUMS website showing the availability of the volunteer status CPS variable]

Contents for the post

Nationally representative demographic data
Accessing US Census data
ACS
CPS (and others!)
Getting started
Getting CPS data from the IPUMS website
Finding variables
Selecting samples
Downloading the data
More reproducible alternative: using the IPUMS API
Loading CPS data
Summarizing CPS data
Weighting
Calculating population-level proportions
Summarizing sample proportions
Testing sample vs. population proportions frequentist-ly
One-sample proportion test for age
One-sample proportion test for volunteering
Proportion tests and differences for everything all at once
Testing sample vs. population proportions Bayesian-ly
ew null hypothesis significance testing
Modeling proportions with a binomial distribution
Working with the posterior
The region of practical equivalence (ROPE)
Bayesian proportion test for volunteering
Posterior proportions, differences, and ROPEs for everything all at once

Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · Jan 27

New blog post! Here's an #rstats guide for how to (1) get CPS data from IPUMS and (2) compare sample and population proportions both frequentistly and Bayesianly with {brms} (with ROPEs!), and (3) make pretty plots and tables #econsky #polisky #dataskyence www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2025/01...

Joe Edwards @joeedwards.bsky.social · Jan 23

New study where we show how diversity-productivity relationships in forests may be mediated by more complex canopies, with structural diversity driving productivity more than species diversity
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Canopy complexity drives positive effects of tree diversity on productivity in two tree diversity experiments

Forest canopy complexity (i.e., the three-dimensional structure of the canopy) is often associated with increased species diversity as well as high primary productivity across natural forests. Howeve...

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

David Rand @dgrand.bsky.social · Jan 7

🚨In Nature🚨
Meta is dropping fact-checking to avoid anti-conservative bias- but is there actually evidence of bias?
We this test empirically & find that conservatives
* ARE suspended more
* BUT share more misinfo
So suspension isn't necessarily evidence of bias www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Differences in misinformation sharing can lead to politically asymmetric sanctions - Nature

We find that conservatives tend to share more low-quality news through social media than liberals, and so even if technology companies enact politically neutral anti-misinformation policies, political...

www.nature.com

Michelle Stuhlmacher, PhD @mstuhlmacher.bsky.social · Dec 6

Lots of research shows that #trees aren't distributed equally across #urban landscapes, but what are the drivers of tree inequality? In our #newarticle, we look at how *land use* mediates the distribution of trees.

authors.elsevier.com/a/1kCz05m5d8...

Read on for our findings: 🧵 1/8

Screenshot of the first page of the Urban Forestry & Urban Greening article "Bridging the land use gap: Examining tree canopy cover and connectivity by land use in 10 U.S. cities".

Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · Aug 27

Three Kinds of Research xkcd.com/2977

Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · Jan 16

Bug Thread xkcd.com/2881

Phineas @phineas.bsky.social · Dec 18

Hey so if you somehow want a painting or print from me that you'd like to have before a specific day it's still possible but that window is closing. And Threadless is still doing $15 tees you can get by a day if you get next day shipping. Just saying.

octophant.us/buy

Lindsay Darling @lindsaydarling.bsky.social · Oct 6

I like to treat them like eggplant. I haven't tried this recipe exactly, but have made similar things. You can also cook some in a bit of butter, then layer them into a lasagna. Or treat them like tofu. Ma po puffball is great. www.punchfork.com/recipe/Eggpl...

Kelsey Atherton @atherton.bsky.social · Oct 4

Here's the tweet

tweet from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it reads:

"Contrary to how McCarthy’s defenders are behaving, men failing up is not a Constitutionally protected right.

The man made risky decisions and faced the natural consequences of them. I am not his mom, and my job is not to put pool noodles around hard corners for Republicans."

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